Ukraine and Post Soviet Studies
Below you will find a collection of my academic publications which center around Ukraine and Post Soviet Studies.
Epidemiology as methodology: COVID-19, Ukraine, and the problem of whiteness
By Marina Levina
Published in Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Vol. 19, No. 2 (2022)
The article "Epidemiology as Methodology: COVID-19, Ukraine, and the Problem of Whiteness" by Marina Levina presents a critical cultural approach to understanding global crises through the lens of epidemiology. Levina reimagines epidemiology not merely as a public health science but as a methodology for analyzing systemic violence, trauma, and inequality.
Under Lenin’s Watchful Eye: Growing Up in the Former Soviet Union
By Marina Levina
Published in Surveillance and Society, Vol. 15, No. 3/4 (2017)
The article "Under Lenin’s Watchful Eye: Growing Up in the Former Soviet Union" by Marina Levina is a personal and scholarly reflection on childhood under Soviet surveillance. Published in Surveillance & Society, it blends memoir with critical theory to examine how surveillance shaped identity, behavior, and memory.
Whiteness and the joys of cruelty
By Marina Levina
Published in Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Vol. 15, No. 1 (2018)
Marina Levina’s essay is a deeply personal and theoretical meditation on cruelty as an affective mechanism intimately tied to whiteness and power. Drawing on her own experiences as a Jewish child in the Soviet Union and later as a white-identified immigrant in the U.S., Levina explores how cruelty operates not merely as violence but as a joyful assertion of dominance, especially through racialized and systemic structures.